Engage
The Methodology

The right acquisition
does not find you.
You find it.

Most buyers come to us after the same experience: months of deal flow that went nowhere, a term sheet that fell apart in diligence, or capital deployed into something that made sense on paper and did not in practice. The problem was never the market. The problem was the process.

What We Do

Three ways to work with us.

Some clients come before they have found a deal. Some come mid-process when something does not feel right. Some come after close, needing someone who understands the business they just bought to help them run it.

Dealflow. Structuring. Negotiation. Close.

For buyers who need a full acquisition capability without building one in-house.

You have a thesis, capital, and a calendar that is already full. What you do not have is the infrastructure to run a disciplined acquisition process from search to close without momentum overriding judgment at every turn.

We provide that. End to end. Mandate formation, proprietary sourcing, founder outreach, diligence, structuring, negotiation, and closing. You stay focused on running your business. We find you the right one to buy next.

5+
Deals closed
2,500+
Founders contacted
2 of 8+
LOIs killed to protect buyer
What is included
Mandate formationUniverse constructionFounder outreachDeal screeningFinancial diligenceDeal structuringNegotiation supportClosing assistance
Books. Accounts. Strategy. Growth.

For operators running a business whose financial infrastructure has not kept up.

After most acquisitions, the buyer inherits a P and L formatted for a sale process, not for running a company. The cost structure is unmapped. There is no model that tells you what is driving margin, what is exposed, or where to put the next pound of capital.

We start at the foundation. Clean up the books, rebuild accounts from source data, and make sure what you are looking at every month actually reflects what the business is doing. Then we build on top of it: forecasting, scenario modelling, and a strategy layer that connects your numbers to where you are trying to go.

Inspire3
First client we now run as fractional CFOs
15 days
From diligence to operating handover
Source data
Every number traced back before we model from it
What is included
Monthly bookkeepingAccounts reconciliationCash flow forecastingManagement accountsFinancial modellingScenario analysisBudget and variance trackingStrategic finance
For founders who want the real picture of their own business.

Most diligence is done for buyers. This one is for you.

We go through your business the same way we would go through a target for one of our buyers. Transaction-level verification. Processor reconciliation. Cost structure mapping. Every number traced back to source.

What you get is not a report that tells you what you already know. It is an independently verified picture of your financial position. Every gap, inconsistency, and hidden exposure surfaced before it becomes someone else's negotiating leverage.

7+
Material findings per engagement on average
99.83%
Monetary match rate on transaction audit
15 days
Full scope on a 1.8M portfolio
30,134
Transactions validated on one engagement
What is included
Transaction-level auditProcessor reconciliationP and L reconstructionCost structure verificationPartner economics reviewCash flow analysisRisk and findings registerInvestor-ready summary
Phase 01

Mandate Definition

Most acquisitions fail before the first conversation is ever made. Not in diligence. Not at the negotiation table. They fail the moment a buyer starts searching without knowing precisely what they are looking for.

You have seen it. Months of deal flow that goes nowhere. Opportunities that feel right until they do not. Capital sitting idle while you evaluate things that were never going to fit. That is not a sourcing problem, it is a mandate problem.

We fix it first. The buyers who move fastest and waste least are the ones who started with the clearest brief, not a vague sector preference and not a rough budget range.

For Borderless, generating 2 to 3M ARR and heading into a Series A, the mandate was not to find a business to acquire. It was to identify 50K to 250K in annualised cashflow through structures the market had not seen before.

The mandate we build with you becomes the lens everything else gets evaluated through. It is the reason we can move quickly when the right deal appears, and walk away cleanly when it does not.

For SmartPrompt, we explored four categories before submitting a single LOI. That process produced a filter precise enough to disqualify two serious candidates mid-engagement.

Borderless - Reframing the brief
Not acquire a firm
The original ask was to buy an immigration business. We redefined it: acquire recurring cashflow, not ownership.
Immigration - UK
Dino Games - Thesis before sourcing
20+ yrs experience
A seasoned PE-exit operator entering consumer mobile for the first time. Mapped before a single target was contacted.
Mobile Gaming
Runify - Risk tolerance
3 months old
The mandate defined exactly how much unproven durability the buyer could absorb. Structure followed from that.
Consumer Fitness
SmartPrompt - Mandate before market
4 categories
Criteria emerged from structured market exposure, not sector enthusiasm. The brief got sharper with every round.
AI / GPT - SaaS
Phase 02

Universe Construction

The best deals are not listed anywhere. The operators who built them are not looking to sell, until the right conversation finds them.

The opportunities on open marketplaces have already been seen by everyone. The information asymmetry is gone before you arrive.

The deals worth doing are the ones nobody else has found yet. Every universe we build starts from zero: primary research, proprietary data, and channels that require effort to access.

For Borderless, we built a target universe that had never existed before, mapping a market that had never been systematically approached for M and A.

For Dino Games, scraping infrastructure pulled App Store and Google Play data across thousands of titles before contacting a single founder. The asset that closed was not on any marketplace.

Targets identified
500
Conversations initiated
130
Mandate-aligned deals
20
Serious candidates
3
Closed
1

The universe we build is not a starting point we hand off. It is a living research asset, continuously refined as feedback comes in and as conversations surface new operators.

Borderless - Universe built
1,500
Advisors mapped from GOV.UK, Companies House, ILB, and WhatsApp communities. Built from scratch.
Never done before
Dino Games - Off-market find
8M installs
Found via Reddit. No broker. No listing. 3K monthly net profit.
Proprietary sourcing
SmartPrompt - Pricing edge from going off-market
200x
Discount versus comparable market transactions, only possible because the asset was sourced before it was widely shopped.
AI / GPT platform
Phase 03

Targeted Outreach

There is a reason most outreach does not work. It is built for volume, not trust. Trust is the only currency that opens doors in markets like these.

The first thing most sourcing operations do is launch a campaign. Thousands of emails, templated messaging, broad targeting. We tested that and moved channels quickly once data showed weak conversion.

Response rates shifted from below 5 percent to 20-40 percent by moving toward social and context-rich outreach. Not a template. A real opening to a real conversation.

Personalisation was treated as a first-order variable, not an optimisation layer. Each message was a real opening to a real conversation.

For Borderless, we ran channels in parallel and measured conversion in real time.

ChannelVolumeRanking
Cold calls~200-250#1
Direct email~1,500#2
LinkedInincluded#3
Social (FB/WA)~600#4

Cold calls ranked first. The data set resource allocation. Result: 43+ serious conversations and 8 to 10 aligned operators.

Dino Games - Channel pivot
<5% to 40%
Response rate after shifting from email to Reddit and Twitter. 3 LOIs issued in the same week.
Week 1 to Week 3
Borderless - Outreach result
43+
Serious conversations with operators in a market never approached for M and A before. 8 to 10 aligned operators surfaced.
UK Immigration
Runify - Social vs email
20-30%
Response rate via Twitter and Reddit versus below 5% on email.
Consumer fitness
Intel gathered beyond the deal
1,000-1,500
Operators mapped for pricing, capacity, and exit appetite through conversations that never converted.
Competitive intel
Phase 04

Diligence and Structuring

You are about to spend six figures on a business you have never operated. The seller is friendly and the numbers look clean. The version you are shown is rarely complete.

Most sellers do not have a full picture of their own financials either. Historical accounting choices, drifted data logic, and legacy payment routing do not show up on summary sheets. They become your problem at close.

This is not worst-case. This is a normal deal. The only way to find what is actually there is source-level reconstruction.

60x
Database vs actual cash - Inspire3
A cost figure in the database was 60 times larger than actual cash leaving the business. Modelling from it made the business look loss-making.
57K
Unreconciled income gap - Inspire3
Difference between processor-level receipts and accounting records on a major income line. Material and previously unspotted.
38
Transactions to wrong account - Inspire3
Completed customer payments routing through legacy infrastructure tied to old arrangements. Caught and shut down before signing.

7 material findings. 30,134 transactions validated. 99.83 percent monetary match rate. Surfaced within 15 calendar days, before capital changed hands.

The diligence work was so operationally grounded that the buyer asked us to keep running the business as fractional CFOs.


On other deals, findings looked different but the principle was the same. Verification before commitment.

  • Dino Games: discrepancies found across payment platforms, plus legacy monetisation mechanics requiring shutdown before close.
  • Runify: quoted MRR did not match collected cash after currency and collection timing adjustments.
  • SmartPrompt: two LOIs terminated before closing the right asset. Price looked attractive; probability-weighted downside did not.
Dino Games
44% of consideration deferred over 12 months
Not price compression, risk reallocation. Seller kept headline. Buyer kept downside protection.
Closed - 39K
Runify
74% of consideration performance-linked
30K deployed upfront on a 110K deal after revenue quality adjustments.
Closed - 110K
SmartPrompt
2 LOIs terminated before right close
80%+ churn, zero proprietary tech, and founder dependency. Momentum bias overruled by discipline.
2 LOIs killed
Diligence scorecard - across all engagements
30,134
Transactions validated individually
15+
Material findings surfaced
15 days
Full DD on a 1.8M portfolio
Phase 05

Execution and Close

Getting to LOI is not the hard part. Holding discipline from LOI to close while pressure builds is where most deals fail quietly.

We have closed across five asset classes. Execution was not paperwork, it was discipline: holding structure, refusing unsafe mechanics, and ensuring operational readiness on day one.

SmartPrompt
LOI to close in 7 days. Zero post-close lag.
Operator recruited in parallel with diligence. Transition-ready before APA signature.
12K - All cash - 7 days
Dino Games
Seller proposed no escrow. Flat rejection.
Signed APA, inspection period, milestone releases, or no deal. Safety over speed, every time.
39K - Structured close
Runify
Neither opening number. Both interests met.
Seller wanted 30% upfront. We opened at 20%. Final structure solved liquidity timing with performance linkage.
110K - 30K upfront

Borderless entered its Series A with a live growth lever worth 70K to 80K annually and a repeatable framework to keep deploying.

For Borderless: 1,500+ operators mapped and 43+ serious conversations converted to a referral partnership worth 70K-80K / yrand an enterprise-value impact up to 1.6M.

For Inspire3: 15 days, seven findings resolved, and a verified financial model from independently validated source data. The engagement became an ongoing operating role as fractional CFO.

The full scorecard
2,500+
Outbound messages sent
300+
Founder conversations conducted
8+
LOIs submitted
2
LOIs terminated to protect buyer
5+
Deals closed
1
Client now operated as fractional CFO

We do not close deals for the sake of closing deals. We close the right ones, and we have walked away from enough wrong ones to know the difference.